I happen to agree with the following: 

I declare that this government is no longer a constitutional and moral form of government. I will deal with it, and I will obey its laws, and I will support it when it is defending our country from foreign and domestic enemies. I will vote in its elections and participate in its political debates. But I will never accept it. I aim at a restoration of constitutional and moral order.  Lawrence Auster at August 09, 2003

Why Radical Traditionalism in Politics? by Jim Kalb

All authoritative American institutions are left-liberal in their principles. As such, they are profoundly at odds with the implicit habitual goods fostered by tradition and with any orientation toward the transcendent. The protection of those things must be at the heart of any orientation calling itself conservative. As a result, an American who wishes to be conservative must put himself radically at odds with the authoritative public institutions of his country. By doing so, he stops being anything that can be recognized as conservative. 

The natural man will far sooner believe that a dead person came to life, than that an imputed, alien righteousness, to which he contributes nothing, is necessary for his eternal salvation.

The State lies in all the tongues of good and evil, and whatever it says is lies, and whatever it has, it has stolen, everything it is, is false, it bites with stolen teeth, and it bites often, it is false down to its bowels.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, 1896

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary"
(H. L. Mencken)

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
(William Pitt, 1783)

Bipartisanship

Samuel Francis "The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.

A favorite weapon in the armory of multiculturalism is the lowly hyphen. When we speak of an African-American or Mexican-American or Asian-American these days, the aim is not descriptive but deconstructive. There is a polemical edge to it, a provocation. The hyphen does not mean “American, but hailing at some point in the past from someplace else.” It means “only provisionally American: my allegiance is divided at best.” (I believe something similar can be said about the feminist fad for hyphenating the bride’s maiden name with her husband’s surname. It is a gesture of independence that is also a declaration of divided loyalty.) It is curious to what extent the passion for hyphenation is fostered more by the liberal elite than the populations it is supposedly meant to serve. How does it serve them? Presumably by enhancing their sense of “self-esteem.” Frederick Douglass saw through this charade some one hundred and fifty years ago. “No one idea,” he wrote, “has given rise to more oppression and persecution toward colored people of this country than that which makes Africa, not America, their home.”   Roger Kimball at "Affirmative Action,” hyphenated Americans, and other conundrums

“No one idea has given rise to more oppression and persecution toward colored people of this country than that which makes Africa, not America, their home.”  Frederick Douglass

"Neither my father nor my father's father ever saw Africa, or knew its meaning or cared overmuch for it...there is nothing so indigenous, so completely `made in America' as we are."  W.E.B. Du Bois

"The Negro is an American. We know nothing of Africa." Martin Luther King
Any Republican who still thinks their party is a party for small government is either so dumb as to be hilarious or so loyal as to be best used as gun fodder.

Between 1800 and 1840, literacy in the Northern States was from 75% to 90%, and in Southern States from 60% to 81%. This, of course, was prior to compulsory public education. I'd like an explanation as to why there still is compulsory public education.

Some root causes of our difficulty: An entitled and immodest society which has bestowed validity to opinion, regardless of merit.

Gradual reform through mainstream channels is no longer an option at this point.

For about forty years now, under the tutelage of William F. Buckley, conservatives have dressed up cowardice as modesty.

Expediency, Haste, Fear and Remuneration are the Gods of Primary Care.

“It is our traditional belief that man was given liberty to ennoble him. We may infer that those who would take his liberty away have the opposite purpose of degrading him…. Now we are at the point where regimentation, which used to be suggested with apologies, comes couched in the language of prerogative. The past shows unvaryingly that when a people’s freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for. That is the dire peril in the present trend toward statism. If freedom is not found accompanied by a willingness to resist, and to reject the favors, rather than to give up what is intangible but precarious, it will not be long be found at all.”
Richard Weaver – American Social / Political Philosopher

The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institution may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest purposes. Should, hereafter, those incited by the lust of power and prompted by the Supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchm[en]t can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.”
George Washington, Draft First Inaugural Address, April 1789: “

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
Alexis de Tocqueville

"Since liberalism begins with the denial of objective essences, the transition from naive do-gooder to traitorous collaborator is built into liberalism from the start."

"Tolerance is the virtue of men who no longer believe in anything." - G.K. Chesterton

If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.

The Mona Lisa was painted by an African artist and stolen from a museum in Ethiopia.

Frederick Douglass saw through this charade some one hundred and fifty years ago. “No one idea,” he wrote, “has given rise to more oppression and persecution toward colored people of this country than that which makes Africa, not America, their home.”

Hark the herald angels sing "Glory to the newborn King! Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners reconciled" Joyful, all ye nations rise Join the triumph of the skies With the angelic host proclaim: "Christ is born in Bethlehem" Hark! The herald angels sing "Glory to the newborn King!"

But fraud is not worth it at our compensation rates.

These people, their attitudes and their words only exist because the majority culture brought them into existence, which it did when it adopted liberalism as its guiding philosophy and thus gave up its identity and legitimacy as a culture. Once that happened, the minorities, who previously would have deferred to the majority culture, became free to act out their animus.

Limited Government: Good for Thee, But Not For Me.
Approximately 81 million Americans receive benefits from Government, either directly or as employment. What is the population of voting Americans? An even more shocking number is that from 1962, the rate of "dependent" Americans grows at 2.5 times that of the population growth! (One can only guess at how much Immigrants have augmented this number.) I was thinking of this in context to your amendment regarding Islam, and in the recent squabble over female suffrage: 1. As long as the state-sponsored egalitarianism remains the core philosophy of government and its' plurality of beneficiaries, there will be little incentive to systematically address long term problems. We already see this is the aborted reform of Social Security, and alas a Republican President has only increased Medicare dependency and costs. 2. What percentage of the recent grass roots response to the Senate amnesty proposal was based on concern for the short-term "pocket book," rather than for the long-term Traditionalist survival reasons that you carefully enumerate? Unless we amend our policy on the outsider (immigration/islam) and amend who can "vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury," the American Experience will end in failure.

And the United States? We are a unique nation, just as the apologists tell us. We started off by repudiating the soul of our nation when we decided to make Christianity the mistress we saw in private rather than the wife we honored in public and private. The Civil War was fought to decide whether the “great” anti-nationalist, universalist, Christ-hating idea should prevail over the older European vision. It isn’t necessary to say which vision prevailed. Because our nation was founded on a renunciation of the European soul, a counter-revolution in this country cannot be based on “getting back to our foundation” unless one makes it clear that our foundation is not the U. S. Constitution but the Christianity of the ancient Europeans.  The European Soul

Under a system of complex and contradictory regulations, everyone is always guilty of something.

Truth is only a compilation of some facts, whereas perception is everything.

Beyond caring for your self, what are you doing with the gift of responsibility that God has given you?

For Leftists, Government is a faith-based initiative.



Luk 12:48 But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

Psa 17:10 They close their hearts to pity; with their mouths they speak arrogantly.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.(John 3:3)

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?(Luke 12:25)

Gen 3:19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. 1Ti 2:1-6

Luk 18:14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

(Mar 9:22)And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." (Mar 9:23) And Jesus said to him, "'If you can'! All things are possible for one who believes."

(Pro 29:18) Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.

(Mat 25:40) And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

(Mark 11:24) Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

Heb 9:27 Indeed, just as people are appointed to die once and after that to be judged, Heb 9:28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people. And he will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly wait for him.

(Mat 25:13) Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

Mat 12:50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

Mat 5:14 "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

1Co 5:12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

Mic 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Mar 8:36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

Rom 8:38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, Rom 8:39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Mat 16:26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
2Co 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Gen 9:6 whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man is his blood shed: for in the image of God hath He made man.

Luk 12:29 And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. Luk 12:30 For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Luk 12:31 Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

And let us remember that without black and Hispanic murders, America's murder rate would be no higher than that of Europe, the continent that American liberals consider their model and exemplar of all good things.  Lawrence Auster at July 20, 2008 08:59 PM

Liberalism and Its Meaning for Christians

by James Kalb

Nonetheless, many people resist the notion that something called “liberalism” can matter so much. After all, liberal views have changed over time and will change again. Everyone holds some such views, few people hold all of them, and most normal people who hold them cut back on them in various ways. Besides, the results attributed to liberalism can be attributed to other things, non-ideological social developments for example. So why not forget stereotypes like “liberalism” and look at particulars?

Crucial cases and the principles that decide them determine the direction of events. At bottom, the liberal principles that have determined the direction of mainstream moral and political discussion in recent decades are quite simple. They hold that value is based on individual desire, and morality on the equal essential worthiness of those desires. It’s human preferences that make things good, and since preferences are equally preferences, everything thought good must equally be good. To think or act otherwise would be “judgmental.” Politics and public morality thus become focused on giving preferences as much and as equally as possible, and on supporting people in their efforts to satisfy their preferences. Freedom, tolerance, equality, and social welfare thus become the principles expected to prevail once something becomes a clear public issue.

What we’ve said so far is accepted by most people, at least in general terms. However, liberal principles also have implications that are less well-known and in the end mean the self-destruction of liberalism. Liberalism qua liberalism, with its exclusive emphasis on freedom and equality, is incapable of dealing rationally with questions of authority and power.

The difficulty is that when preferences clash, the liberal demand for equal treatment means in the end that the dispute has to be resolved by someone other than the parties, and the resolution has to pass itself off as something that isn’t a substantive decision. Anything else would be oppressive, since it would allow one party’s preferences to suppress another’s. That squeamishness about power makes normal political life impossible. A political issue, by definition, involves a conflict of preferences. Liberalism must therefore (at least ideally) depoliticize all serious political issues and determine them by an allegedly neutral process. It needs to rule by denying that power is being exercised, claiming in effect to be a system of power that rejects and opposes power.

The history of liberalism shows its reluctance to admit that government makes and enforces important decisions that might well have been made otherwise. Under classical liberalism, the need for a neutral resolution of all issues meant that everything had to be a matter of property rights. To answer a question you asked what the holders of the relevant property interests wanted. Today, the supposed neutrality of property rights is supplemented and when possible replaced by the supposedly less rigid and arbitrary neutrality of technicians, experts, consultants, therapists, ethicists, facilitators, social scientists, lawyers, transnational bureaucrats, and human rights advocates, all of them here to help us and none of them (supposedly) exercising significant discretionary power.

The claim that such people and the norms they enforce are neutral is, of course, absurd. Liberals plainly have a theory of what is good, a vision of what human relations should be, and the will to back their views by force and insist they be followed throughout human life so that everyone has to live in their kind of society whether he likes it or not. The ostensible neutrality of liberalism disguises a practical dictatorship of intrusive functionaries and money. The taxes, regulations, and re-education programs that feature so prominently in advanced liberal society wouldn’t be needed if liberal governments were neutral. While liberals claim to be on the side of the little guy, the claim is evidently false. They often oppose particular tyrannies, but the opposition is part of an effort to abolish local power in the interests of universal power. Respectable institutions and well-placed people are regularly liberal, while those who reject liberalism are tagged as ignorant, provincial and lower class. Can it really be true that in liberal society the well-placed and powerful become selfless while provincials and outsiders become oppressive?

In fact, advanced liberalism stands for a system of comprehensive social administration, and favors irresponsible central power as long as that power is its own. The system rules by pretending not to command, but only to protect principles like equality and tolerance that are accepted by all and precede all legitimate public discussion. The need to keep up the pretence gives liberal rule its specific quality–its tendency, for example, to rely on judges and functionaries who wrap their decisions in claims of legal principle and expert knowledge that no one understands but everyone must give in to.

It also means that opposing views, which would radically undermine the legitimacy of liberal rule by forcing it to exert power in visible and controversial ways, must somehow be kept out of public sight. Comprehensive indoctrination, “Political Correctness” and “hate speech” rules, which set strict limits on what can legitimately be said in public, are thus essential parts of advanced liberalism. To bring the matter home for Christians, liberalism must try to eliminate the social relevance of all religion that is understood as more than a poetic representation of purely human aspirations.

The point is unavoidable. A liberal government recognizes no ultimate principle of authority higher than what people want. Its principles thus require it to base its legitimacy on the consent of those recognized as legitimate members of society, and in the end – since liberalism is inclusive and believes in equality and individual rights – on the consent of all human beings. It can’t be satisfied if even in the minds of a minority there exists a principle of authority independent of its own and potentially at odds with it. The mere existence of such a thing strikes at the root of the claim that liberalism uniquely reconciles government and the individual autonomy that it recognizes as ultimately authoritative.

The attempt to eliminate specifically religious authority everywhere in society is thus integral to advanced liberalism. A government that makes individual choice the highest principle can’t easily tolerate it when individuals want the wrong things. Liberalism thus demands thought control. Fear and hatred of “intolerance and fundamentalism” – the belief that there are goods that do not reduce to human desire – are a permanent feature of advanced liberal society.

To understand the extent of the practical threat liberal dominance poses to religious believers, one must understand the depth, power and pervasiveness of the forces behind it. Some of these forces relate to accepted understandings of reason and reality, others to more material factors.

As to the former, liberalism is intimately linked to a modern secular and scientific understanding of rationality that emphasizes observation and measurement. Since values can’t be directly observed or measured, liberalism treats them as subjective feelings projected on morally neutral facts. As a result, respect for them becomes simply a matter of respect for the feelings of those holding them. Equal respect for persons is thought to require equal respect for values, and the basis of morality becomes giving people equally what they want. Liberalism is thus a rather direct moral implementation of the operative philosophical outlook of our time, positivist scientism – the belief that the methods of the modern natural sciences define rationality and what’s real. (“Postmodernism” is irrelevant to the issue because it doesn’t give answers. When someone needs to deal with a real problem he reverts to scientism.)

The integration of liberalism with scientistic ways of thought makes it impossible for most educated people today, who have been brought up on scientism, to conceive that liberalism might be wrong. To give credit in dealing with others to what can’t be seen and demonstrated, or treat a “value” as more than a personal preference, is thought irrational, willful, oppressive, and dangerous. If you’re not a liberal, there’s something wrong with you, and you can’t be accepted as a legitimate participant in public life. Hence, for example, the reaction to the film The Passion. The specific arguments didn’t matter: the bottom line was that the film had to be stopped simply because of its spectacular refusal to reduce God to human desires, a refusal that threatened the foundations of the advanced liberal order.

Other forces supporting liberalism reflect present-day social and technological conditions. Technology has consequences. Electronic communications, jet flight, city life, and the automobile make every person, place and thing equally present to every other, so that each has the same environment and position. That situation, along with the extreme fluidity of relationships, destroys differences of implication and significance, so that nothing means anything definite and everything becomes either a resource for some further purpose or an object of undifferentiated desire or aversion. Money, government decree, and technical rationality become the sole principles of order, and the whole of life – work, education, entertainment, the mechanics of daily life, the relations between the sexes and generations – becomes swallowed up in a universal rationalized system that treats the whole world as a resource to be processed for efficient equal satisfaction of preferences.

The resulting technocratic order takes human control for human purposes as the standard, rejecting the authority of the given and the transcendent. History, biology and religion become obstacles to be overcome rather than ordering principles to be accepted. Pleasure and power become the ultimate goods, and other goods are thought to make sense only by reference to them. Pushpin (now called “popular culture”) becomes as good as poetry, religion becomes a “preference,” and traditional morality becomes simply an effort by some people to control others.

Technocracy thus promotes the liberal moral outlook. The reverse is also true: liberal morality serves technocracy by rooting out everything at odds with its dominant institutions. A technically rationalized process strives for clarity and perfection through standardization. Differences must be as few, well-defined and technically manageable as possible. When applied to society such demands mean that the particularities of history, place, and human relationship must be deprived of significance. Qualitative differences must be treated as differences in individual taste, so that a “pro wrestling” match and pontifical high mass can be treated as things of the same kind and dealt with by the same standards and procedures. “Discrimination,” the recognition of serious non-bureaucratic and non-market distinctions, and “intolerance,” the recognition that to pursue one thing is to reject another, become outrages against social order and morality. The greatest threat, however, remains “fundamentalism” – recognition of an authoritative principle that can’t be reduced to the unified rationalized process that constitutes the technocratic order.

By making opposition to discrimination, intolerance, and fundamentalism its supreme moral principle, liberalism expresses and promotes technocracy. The great “cultural” issues of the day – PC, multiculturalism, the struggle over sex and family life, the growing dominance of the radical secularist Left – are all aspects of the campaign by technocratic institutions to make their power absolute by eradicating, as discrimination, intolerance, and fundamentalism, and all traces of other forms of social organization. Thus, to say marriage matters is “discrimination;” to say it has to do with some relations and not others is “intolerance;” and to keep making those points when their opposition to technocratic rationality has been pointed out is “fundamentalism.” Marriage must therefore be abolished as a specific natural institution with a necessary social function and reduced to sentiment and non-binding private commitment so people can become simply a mass of consumers and productive units guiding their lives solely by idiosyncratic taste within technically rational public institutions. The same point applies to all religious and cultural standards that don’t simply repeat the demands of the technocratic order. To give such standards any weight at all is discrimination, intolerance, and – to the extent a principle is asserted – fundamentalism or similar fanaticism.

Liberalism has thus become an instrument of a system of power making absolute claims. The results have been horribly destructive. In the interests of the institutions now dominant and a conception of morality that makes them absolute, liberalism has bulldozed and paved over the social and cultural setting in which ordinary people make their homes and find meaning and dignity, reducing them to powerlessness and degradation while raising the well-placed to secure and comprehensive dominance. Pop culture – glitter for the few and trash for the many – is its worthy symbol.

The triumph of liberalism and technocracy means that Christians now find themselves in an all-pervasive setting whose basic principles require the social eradication of their faith, or at least its transformation into something radically other and less than what it was. Hence, the crisis in the churches and in their relation to the general society. To participate in public life as it is is to surrender in advance, because it requires effective agreement that Christian belief is a private taste, and thus not belief about God, man, and the world at all. While to withdraw from public life is to give up the battle against a relentless and expansionist enemy.

The immediate prospects for the churches thus seem bleak. Nonetheless, the long-term outlook is good, even from a purely secular perspective. A rationalized system is never as rational or consistent as it hopes. Advanced managerial liberalism demands the rationalization of human life on a few clear principles, but utopian enterprises always fall apart. Man can be disordered, corrupted, and killed, but not neutered, corrected, and made manageable. He always wants something beyond the given and the technically attainable. Religion corresponds to that desire, so it can’t be wiped out and always comes back.

We can’t know just how the advanced liberal order will fall apart, or exactly what will follow, but we can be certain it will not last. If nothing else, it will disappear for failure to reproduce itself. In the meantime, the task of those who see liberalism’s radical defects is to understand it for what it is, resist it, keep alive what they can for better days, take advantage of the rights or favors liberalism grants, appeal to whatever resists or escapes technocratic rationalization, and make the case, in season and out, for something more worthy of humanity.